[[Image:Congo.jpg|right|300px|thumb|Clearing tropical forests ate away at profit margins. However, ample plots of cleared land were already available. Above, a Congolese farming village (Baringa, Equateur) is emptied and levelled to make way for a rubber plantation.]]
European exploration and administration took place from the 1870s until the 1920s. The area was first mapped by the British explorer [[Henry Morton Stanley]]. He prepared the region for European colonization. Stanley had beenundertaken exploreringhis explorations mainly under the sponsorship of King Leopold II of Belgium, who desired what was to become the Congo as a colony. In a succession of negotiations Leopold, professing humanitarian objectives in his capacity as chairman of the [[Association Internationale Africaine]], played one European rival against the other. The Congo territory was acquired formally by Leopold at the [[Conference of Berlin]] in 1885. He made the land his private property and named it the '[[Congo Free State]]'. Leopold's regime began undertaking various 'development' projects, such as the railway that ran from the coast to Leopoldville (now Kinshasa) which took years to complete. Nearly all of these projects were aimed at increasing the capital Leopold and his cohorts could extract from the colony, leading to atrocious exploitation of Africans. In the Free State, the local population was brutalized in exchange for [[rubber]], a growing market with the development of rubber tires. The selling of the rubber made a fortune for Leopold, who built several buildings in [[Brussels]] and [[Ostend]] to honour himself and his country. During the period between 1885 and 1908, between 5 and 15 (the commonly accepted figure is ~10) million Congolese died as a consequence of exploitation and diseases. To enforce the rubber quotas, the ''[[Force Publique]]'' (FP) was called in. The FP was an army, but its aim was not to defend the country, but to terrorise the local population The Force Publique made the practice of cutting off the limbs of the natives as a means of enforcing rubber quotas a matter of policy; this practice was disturbingly widespread. However, there were international protests spearheaded mainly by [[Edmund_Dene_Morel | E.D. Morel]] and British diplomat/Irish patriot [[Roger Casement]], whose 1904 report on the Congo condemned the practice, as well as famous writers such as [[Mark Twain]]. [[Joseph Conrad]]'s novella ''[[Heart of Darkness]]'' also takes place in Congo Free State. In 1908, the Belgian parliament bowed to international pressure in order to save their last bit of prestige in Europe, forcibly adopting the Free State as a Belgian colony from the king. From then on, it became the [[Belgian Congo]], but in practical terms, things changed only slightly.
During [[World War II]] the small Congolese army achieved several victories against the [[Italians]] in north Africa.
